The Lunarian Professor and His Remarkable Revelations Concerning the Earth, the Moon and Mars / Together with An Account of the Cruise of the Sally Ann

by James B. Alexander

“You understand the law of the attraction of gravitation”—I nodded assent—“but you know nothing of the repulsion of gravitation.” Indeed I did not. I had never heard of such a thing.

He continued: “All polar attractions are accompanied by repulsions. This you see in magnetism and in electricity, and it is equally true in gravitation. The force with which bodies fall toward each other consists merely of the difference between the attractive and the repulsive force. Ordinarily the attractive force takes hold of the near ends of the molecules of ether contained in solid or fluid bodies, and the repulsive force affects only the further ends of the same molecules, so that by reason of the difference in the distances over which these two forces operate the attractive force always over-powers repulsion. But we have discovered a way by which the action of these forces is reversed, so that the work of repulsion is performed on the near end of the molecules and attraction on the further end, and then attraction being the weaker of the two, the body, as a whole, is repelled. We imitate in fact the action that takes place when the attraction between two electrified bodies turns to repulsion. Repulsion also takes place between the sun and the tails of comets. The comet’s tail is attracted toward the nucleus of the comet and at the same time repelled from the sun. We have not been able to make bodies discriminating like that in their attractions.

“But,” said I, “it must take as much power to make this change as the changed condition yields after it is made and I cannot see where you get the power; you cannot make something out of nothing.”

“Very true,” said he, “but the resistance to the change is in reality—very small, and it is accomplished, even by neuro-magnetism in a wonderfully simple manner. The proportion of force required to do it is no greater than that required to move the slide valve in the steam chest of one of your steam engines, by which the enormous force of the steam is alternately shifted to first one end and then the other of the cylinder. We can generate the force required for this, in our own tissues and it accumulates in electric organs possessed by us similar to those of your electric eels. I will show you.”

With that he reached out and touched me on the mouth. There was a flash and a sensation as if a coal of fire had touched me, and a smart shock passed through my limbs. I was easily enough convinced that he possessed large electric storage capacity, and he told me he could give me a shock 100 times as strong as the one I had received. I was willing to take his word for that. But I was by no means satisfied with his explanation of the reversal of the forces in gravitation. It seemed to me to involve a mechanical fallacy and I half suspected he purposely avoided giving me the true explanation. Although I have since given the subject considerable thought I have not been able to clear it up. Theorize as I might however, there was the fact that gravitation was somehow suspended, in the case of the car.

I said to him earnestly, that I would give anything I possessed to be able to understand and apply these principles as he did.

“I have no doubt at all of that,” said he, “but it is our secret, and I could commit no more heinous act of treason against my people or our planet, than by divulging it.”

“For goodness sake,” I exclaimed, “tell me what planet you inhabit, and what harm could result from giving this invaluable information.”

“My home is the moon,” he said quietly, and I have ever since wondered how I came to receive the announcement without the slightest degree of surprise as if it were an every day occurrence to meet people from the moon.

“The discovery you wish me to reveal to you, was made by our ancestors over a million years ago,” he went on, “the population of the moon was then as great as the planet would support in comfort, and its regulation and maintenance had been reduced to a strictly scientific basis. It was seen at once and soon experimentally proved that our people could by the use of this principle easily visit the earth, and if the discovery should be communicated to the earth people, there would be nothing to prevent flooding the moon with an undesirable horde of adventurers, who would like a swarm of seventeen year locusts proceed to lay claim to everything in sight and seriously disturb the lunar peace and prosperity. And so the communication of this secret was forbidden on pain of the terrible punishment of projection.”